It's been 24 years since Mario first bounded across the Mushroom Kingdom in search of Princess Peach. Twenty-four years of platform perfection; of giddy, ebullient bopping. You know what they say, if it ain't broke and all that. And there is nothing or no-one in the video game sphere that stands the weathering of time quite like Nintendo's number one mascot. Nor, perhaps, is there anyone quite so versatile. When the 3D revolution came, Mario not only took it into his stride but leaped in headfirst, defining a generation with that same infectious joy. In that regard, the world may have changed, but Mario hasn't.

Among all the sturm und drang of the modern video game landscape, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is a testament as to why that is something we should be thankful for. It's the first 2D Mario on a home console for 15 years. It's perhaps not a new dawn, but it is a wonderful revival and a gentle reminder as to what can be done with a dpad and two buttons. The simple pleasures of running and jumping; colour and character. This time around you can share it with up to three pals. The first time a Mario game has offered proper co-op play.

It takes a little getting used to. With nearly a quarter-century’s worth of Mario muscle memory up there, it all needs a gentle rewiring to account for more people scampering across the Kingdom and pinching your fire flowers. The camera zooms out to accommodate Mario, Luigi and two toads as they bound about each level, but the tether only stretches so far. Early deaths can happen as one player gets a little carried away and sprints off without his partners, the left side of the screen gobbling up any stragglers.

There’s also a definite physicality to each player which initially confounds. Attempting a tricky jump, only for Luigi to bump into Mario’s ample backside and tumble off the bottom of the screen can be an initial annoyance -apart from for the more mischievous, of course.

After a little time, however, what appear to be clumsy irritants begin to make perfect sense. Keeping the play confined lends the game a more studious approach. What would be a comfortable dash with one player takes on a new light with extra players, encouraging you to work together and carefully negotiate each obstacle to keep your team’s life stock up. It is, for all intents and purposes, the very definition of a co-operative game. That physicality becomes an asset, bouncing off the head of an ally gives you a vertical boost to get to those hard-to-reach places. You can even pick friends up with a shake of the remote (held sideways) to carry them over a tight spot, or even chuck them around, should the fancy take you.

It’s often absolute chaos, particularly as the player count rises. But it’s a good kind of chaos, a colourful, exuberant whirlwind that turns the crooked eyebrow that may greet the concept of a co-op 2D Mario into a mile-wide grin. Even failure can be greeted by guffaws, with comedy deaths a rite of passage. Lobbing that shell at just the wrong time to knock out your entire team, for instance. Or in your own desperate struggle to make a jump, bumping your buddies out of the way.

While the slapstick can ease the pain of another game over, NSMB Wii does have its fair share of pad-launching, swear-inducing frustrations. For all that it will be undoubtedly marketed as a family-friendly game -especially considering Wii’s ‘expanded’ userbase- it is an exceptionally tough game. It’s difficult in the ‘old-school’ sense of the word too, with several sticking points scattered around the game’s eight worlds. Lives will dwindle and for some, interest may be lost. There are concessions to this. During co-op play should one of you fall, you will come floating back into the screen in a bubble which needs to be popped by an ally. You can also conjure a bubble around you by pressing the A button, allowing more able players to dash through a level while you float behind. In single-player, multiple deaths on a single level lead to the offer of a CPU-controlled playthrough of the level, with you able to jump in at any time to take over. This is all very well to allow progress, but given actually playing the levels has always been Super Mario Bros.’ greatest reward it suggests the balance here isn’t quite right.

Of course, Mario veterans will be delighted with the challenge on offer. As a single-player game, Super Mario Bros. is still an intoxicating as ever. There’s definite familiarity to the level design; of course there’s an ice world and rule-of-three boss fights, and many levels bring back whimsical memories of the Marios of old. But we’re on hallowed ground here and the magic of Nintendo’s expert design hasn’t dimmed. You may have seen a lot of it before, but there still isn’t a developer that comes anywhere near to Nintendo’s richness of invention and imagination. Structurally it most resembles Super Mario Bros. 3, with different paths through each world. However, it doesn’t match Super Mario World (in this writer’s opinion, still the absolute pinnacle of 2D platformers) for its expansive branching and exploration.

Control-wise it’s as tight and precise as ever, the connection between player, pad and game totally organic. The only fly in the ointment being the need to shake the controller to perform a spin-jump. It’s perfectly serviceable as a control scheme, but awkward enough to occasionally sever that link. When a game is as demanding of pinpoint accuracy as Mario is, such imprecision can be calamitous. The option to use either the GameCube or Classic Controller would have been welcome, but it’s by no means a deal-breaker.

What’s perhaps the most impressive thing about NSMB Wii is how the introduction of new players can alter the entire momentum of the game, while still housing an excellent single-player adventure. Similarly, a simple shift of the goalposts in terms of objective can offer similar transformation. The Coin Battle and Free Play modes offer competitive hi-jinks. The former is fairly self-explanatory with players dashing through levels trying to amass the most spinning gold, while Free Play offers a leaderboard at the end of each play totting up the amount of enemies bopped and points scored. It takes all those co-op helping hands and turns them into devilish weapons as you all pelt through the stages in gleeful combat.

So is there anyone more versatile? The odd balancing issue does threaten to undermine Mario’s first foray into co-op multiplayer and there is the nagging feeling that, perhaps, Nintendo were not entirely sure of its own focus. But these are quibbles oft forgotten when in the throes of NSMB Wii’s joyful, beguiling character. The number of players may have changed only to multiply the fun, but at his heart, Mario hasn’t. And while it may be a little familiar, we really should be thankful for that.